Travel Journal

Home away from home

(Thursday 23 April 2015) by Mariken

The Invisible Man

In our case this is a bit contradictory. As we do not have a home, how can we be away from it? Let's just say that the Netherlands is our normal 'home', so we can safely state that we are away from home. For a while already. The beauty of travelling is that new homes gradually require less and less, which makes finding new homes increasingly easy. There are plenty of spots in Europe we can nowadays call our 'second' (or third or fourth) home, it requires no more than a place to sleep and cook (which can be our tent and our petrol stove respectively) and some basic sanitation. Easy does it. One place among these ad hoc homes stands out above all the others though: La Almona Chica in El Chorro. We're back!!!

After cruising the Mediterranean waters, we safely arrived in Barcelona, only to leave it immediately, to drive to Aranjuez. There we spent the remainder of the Semana Santa on a very crowded campsite (we had the last spot available!), which enabled us to do some nice sightseeing in the surrounding area. One day to Toledo (which was nice, but a bit disappointing) and one day to Madrid. As it was Good Friday that day, it meant endless queues, but we managed to visit the Royal Palace, the Parque del Retiro and the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, where we admired Picasso's masterpiece 'Guernica'. Other than that we leisurely strolled through Madrid's cosy streets and had paella at night (which, yes I know, is not from Madrid, but from Valencia, but we are tourists and Spain means paella, right?). The pictures are not great, but believe me when I say that we had a wonderful day.

And then to the south. On Easter Sunday we finally arrived in El Chorro, two years after our first visit. Susan and Dell are still safe and sound, as are all the dogs (one addition!) and cats. The cottages are still standing and so were the weeds, which I patiently pulled out the past few days. We live in Casa Anita again, as we did two years ago and it truly feels like home. Our days are filled with sunshine, tea, weeding, making beds, climbing, socializing, good food, chasing the dog, feeding the chickens, gathering the eggs, eating tortilla and enjoying the good Andalusian life. Last weekend new friends (who we first met in Geyikbayiri) came to visit us and we had two marvellous days of climbing. Pics from that will follow; one of the climbers is a professional photographer and she managed to snap some nice shots. We'll keep you posted!